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At the 2016 Young Farmers Conference held at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, AppleSeed lead designer Connor Stedman gave a talk on Carbon Farming titled, Regenerative Agriculture for Climate Stabilization.

In his talk, Connor shares frameworks for understanding the climate crisis and explores in depth the science of agricultural carbon sequestration and the wide range of carbon farming practices utilized around the world. AppleSeed Permaculture specializes in designing and implementing these regenerative agriculture systems on the ground for farms and working landscapes around the Northeast US.

By Alastair Bland for NPR.org. Reposted with permission. Full attribution below.

This week, world leaders are hashing out a binding agreement in Paris at the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. And for the first time, they’ve made the capture of carbon in soil a formal part of the global response to the climate crisis.

“This is a game changer because soil carbon is now central to how the world manages climate change. I am stunned,” says André Leu, president of IFOAM — Organics International, an organization that promotes organic agriculture and carbon farming worldwide.

Leu is referring to the United Nations Lima-Paris Action Agenda, a sort of side deal aimed at “robust global action towards low carbon and resilient societies.” On Dec. 1, countries, businesses and NGOs signed on to a series of new commitments under the agenda, including several on agriculture.

Currently, the Earth’s atmosphere contains about 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Eric Toensmeier, a lecturer at Yale and the author of The Carbon Farming Solution, a book due out in February, says the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide levels must be cut to 350 parts per million or lower to curb climate change.

Toensmeier and Leu are among a growing number of environmental advocates who say one of the best opportunities for drawing carbon back to Earth is for farmers and other land managers to try to sequester more carbon in the soil.

“Reducing emissions is essential, but eventually it still gets us to catastrophic climate change,” says Toensmeier, who’s attending the Paris talks on behalf of the group Project Drawdown. “The level of emissions in the atmosphere now is already past a tipping point. That means we have to sequester carbon.”

Using photosynthesis, plants draw carbon from the air and deposit it in the soil. And farming is a simple way of growing crops and managing soil that, under the right conditions, encourages the buildup of carbon in the ground. In addition to countering global warming, carbon-rich soil can be more productive and hold water better than soil with lower carbon content.

There are two basic ways for farmers to capture it, says Connor Stedman, an agricultural consultant in the Hudson Valley with the firm AppleSeed Permaculture.

“You can put carbon in soil, and you can put carbon in long-lived perennial plants, especially trees,” says Stedman.

And you can start, according to Torri Estrada, managing director with the Carbon Cycle Institute in northern California, by disturbing the land as little as possible.

In conventional industrial agriculture, the soil is often tilled or plowed to disrupt weeds and prepare the land for planting. But turning the soil this way (or overgrazing animals on rangelands) introduces oxygen to the carbon. The carbon and oxygen then can bond into carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas.

As food production has intensified, between 50 and 80 percent of the soil carbon has been lost around the world, according to researchers at the Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center.

Gabe Brown grows oats, alfalfa, peas, clover and other field crops in North Dakota. He says that when he bought his land in 1991, his soil’s carbon level registered at a dismal 1.9 percent on average. “It was a tan, lifeless powder,” says Brown, who delivers seminars around the nation on carbon farming and has become a sort of guru of the movement.

But then he decided not to till or plow to boost carbon levels in his soil. And his efforts have paid off. “Now, [the soil] looks like black cottage cheese,” he says, adding that his yields are as much as 25 percent greater than those of conventional farms nearby, and his soil is up to 6 percent carbon on average.

According to Stedman, healthy, undisturbed soil rich in organic matter can contain anywhere from 8 to 20 percent carbon. In addition to minimal tilling and plowing, another way to sequester carbon in soil is to add compost. Cover crops add carbon, too, and also reduce erosion.

But to make a real dent in the carbon dioxide emissions – and climate change — with carbon farming, Stedman says farmers globally would have to deposit on average just over 25 tons of atmospheric carbon into each acre of the Earth’s arable land. That could take decades. And that assumes carbon emissions could also be halted and that all farmers in the world actually participate. Stedman says that, realistically, since only some farmers will be actively trying to sequester carbon in coming decades, it may require depositing much more than 25 tons per acre.

There’s another possible wrinkle in the scheme, says Peter Donovan, a board member of the Soil Carbon Coalition. As carbon is drawn from the atmosphere and into the Earth, the ocean will release some of its own carbon into the air, which could substantially offset the progress of sequestration.

“Business as usual with conventional agriculture is just contributing to greenhouse gases, soil erosion, ocean dead zones, all of the above,” says Dolman, co-founder of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in northern California, which promotes sustainable agriculture. “But to not move forward with carbon farming … well, somebody would have to tell me what else we are going to do.”

There are signs beyond the Lima-Paris Action Agenda, announced in Paris on Dec. 1, that the carbon farming movement is moving forward.

The Carbon Cycle Institute is working with local governments to teach the basics of carbon farming to growers and ranchers around California.

In France, the Ministry of Agriculture, Agrifood and Forestry has launched an international campaign to increase soil carbon content.

There are other ways to sequester carbon besides agriculture and forestry, such as capturing emissions from power plants and piping the carbon to underground storage spaces.

But Estrada says doing so by farming makes the most sense.

“Photosynthesis and soil has been working for billions of years,” he says. “It’s the longest running [research and development] project around, so why not use the simple, well proven one that we know works?”

Alastair Bland is a freelance writer based in San Francisco who covers food, agriculture and the environment.

Can publicly owned farmland be a catalyst for improving suburban community health & vigor?

AppleSeed Permaculture and Milone & MacBroom, Inc. are collaborating on a project with the town of Hamden Connecticut to envision the potentials for reuse of a former farm. This project is funded by a grant from the state Department of Agriculture. Agriculture has deep roots in Hamden, with orchards in this location appearing on maps since 1852. The former Maselli Farm remained in agricultural use even as neighboring farmland was rapidly developed into suburban communities. Now this 33-acre tract of land is one of the last remaining open spaces in the community.

Residents in the neighborhoods adjoining Maselli Farm have tenaciously pursued maintaining this land as open space. A community meeting drew a large crowd eager to offer their ideas about what Maselli Farm should become. Most people advocated for either a public open space, a working farm, or a blend of the two. Our role is now to reconcile the most popular ideas into a plan that makes sense socially, ecologically, and financially.

Maintaining open space and farmland in our towns and cities provides many benefits. Recreational opportunities positively impact people’s emotional and physical health, while contact with trees and living systems has a profound impact on mental well-being. Children who spend more time in “green” settings have reduced symptoms of ADHD and higher test scores. The living systems provide numerous “ecosystem services” such as cleaning the air, infiltrating water and reducing runoff, cooling the community, and bolstering local biodiversity. The land base can also be utilized to grow food and other products to be consumed locally in a way that builds local economic resiliency and improves food security.

In this design, a forested buffer around the edges of the site offers wildlife habitat and other ecosystem services while also creating a buffer for the surrounding neighborhoods. A swath through the center of the site becomes a native grass and wildflower meadow, providing ecological diversity and granting visitors impressive views across the site and into the distance. A large area is dedicated to agricultural activities, while other areas host community gardens, a gathering pavilion, and spaces of outdoor learning. The historic barn is renovated and serves as an anchor for cultural activities and a window into Hamden’s history. A trail system connects neighborhoods through the site and allows users to experience the diversity of ecosystems, terrain, and uses that the site has to offer.

Wouldn’t your neighborhood benefit from a productive community green space? We believe that every neighborhood needs a farm. Contact AppleSeed Permaculture if you want to support making a project like this happen in your town.

Connor Stedman, consultant and designer for AppleSeed Permaculture, will lead a pre-conference intensive at NOFA’s Summer Conference. He will be providing an overview of farming practices that can help stabilize the global climate by sequestering atmospheric carbon in soil and perennial plants.This will be the forty-first annual Summer Conference and will be held from August 14-16 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Draft law on organic farming awaits vote; private initiatives work to support organic development

ASTANA – As Kazakhstan pushes to develop its agricultural sector with increased funding for farming even in times of belt-tightening, organic farming and permaculture experts are hoping the concepts maintain a foothold in the country.

Though overlooked in recent decades, the practices are part of the country’s not-too-distant past, and today, Kazakhstan is working toward exporting its own ecologically “clean” products under its own national brand, Vice Minister of Agriculture Yermek Kosherbayev said during a seminar on supporting the development of organic agriculture and institutional capacity-building in Kazakhstan in Astana on Feb. 27. However, Kosherbayev said, a lack of legislation is slowing the process down.

“Until less than 100 years ago, all Kazakh agriculture was organic,” Ethan Roland, head of the nonprofit Apios Institute of Regenerative Perennial Agriculture based in Massachusetts, told The Astana Times in a Feb. 27 interview. “And it sustained itself for literally thousands of years. … In my opinion, the current ‘development’ of Kazakh (and most other global ‘green revolution’) agriculture towards fossil-fuel-dependent industrial monoculture is highly unsustainable. This alone will drive a shift to more climatically and culturally appropriate agriculture.”

Wild rose hips in apple forest area.

Moving Away From a Destructive Past

A Nov. 24 roundtable discussion organized by the Astana Centre of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the ULE Coalition for a Green Economy and the Development of G-Global brought together government, business and nongovernmental organization representatives to discuss the state’s role in supporting organic farming, including providing incentives, as well as specific agricultural technologies.

“The current methods of farming in Kazakhstan are leading to the destruction of natural vegetation that protects the land from erosion and accelerate the process of soil mineralization, which result in drastic decline of its fertility, crops yields and harvest as a whole,” said head of the OSCE’s Astana Centre Natalia Zarudna at the roundtable, as reported by the Times of Central Asia on March 14. Organic farming practices could contribute to solving the problem, she said.

An OSCE report on the discussion said that the group noted that developing organic farming and implementing Kazakhstan’s transition to a green economy depend a great deal on the development of appropriate legislation and government regulation, as well as using domestic and international experience effectively.

Participants called for active policies to stimulate innovation and gain experience and offered 12 concrete recommendations. These included bringing the Ministries of Agriculture and Energy together with the roundtable organizers to draft regulations based on international experience and increase awareness of the green economy transition and organic farming in Kazakhstan; creating an online exhibition of Kazakhstan’s innovative, organic products for EXPO 2017 in Astana; involving Kazakhs more deeply in the organic agriculture category of G-Global’s annual EXPO 2017 competition and passing a draft law on organic agriculture. (The draft law sets out the provision of state support for organic agriculture, including setting rules for labelling organic products from Kazakhstan.)

At a media briefing on March 12, Zhibek Azhibayeva, secretary of the Trade Committee of the Kazakhstan’s National Chamber of Entrepreneurs, said Kazakhstan’s organic products market had been estimated at more than $500 million and that plans were in place to introduce an organic products production chain, the Times of Central Asia reported.

According to Azhibayeva,150,000 hectares of farmland in Kostanai oblast have been certified as eco-friendly. At the Feb. 27 seminar, the Kazakhstan Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (KAZFOAM) reported that 25 farms in Almaty, Kostanai and North Kazakhstan have 296,000 hectares of certified ecologically clean fields.

However, the country’s legacy of environmental damage can be felt today. According to the NP.kz report, the Agriculture Ministry said 21.4 million hectares of land were used for agriculture in 2014, which should be increased to 22.5 million hectares by 2018. However, according to Deputy General director of the Kazakh Research Institute of the Agroindustrial Complex and Rural Development Vladimir Grigoruk, “according to our calculations, it is possible today to grow on only 11.5 million hectares of arable land, as the rest of the area, almost half, is polluted by industrial waste, various chemicals, buried animals or radioactive waste.”

Wild apple forests at site with grapes, hops, licorice, and other economically useful species.

Replanting Organic Roots

Roland is working with the Kazakh Research Institute of Fruit Growing and Viticulture (KazNIIPiV) in Almaty and the Institute for Ecological and Social Development (IESD) in Almaty. They work primarily on preserving and regenerating the biodiversity of Kazakhstan’s apple forests, but also plan to branch out into other areas of biodiverse farming.

“This work is just beginning,” Roland told The Astana Times. “Some of my colleagues … have been working on different aspects of this – e.g. IESD promoting sound agricultural practices within the matrix of the existing biodiverse apple forests. Going forward, we intend to offer workshops on the benefits of biodiverse farming and explore research projects.” He expects to find a receptive audience. His Kazakh colleagues are also enthusiastic about developing organic agriculture, Roland said, especially as its products will likely demand higher prices in local and export markets.

Raul Karychev, laboratory chief at KazNIIPiV, told The Astana Times on March 10 that his institute is studying and implementing elements of organic fruit growing, including identifying varieties most adapted to local conditions and which don’t need chemical treatments and studying adaptive orchard design and crown formation systems, drip irrigation, high-technology farming, organic fertilizer and more.

With international partners including the Apios Institute, the institute has established wild fruit ecosystems in the Zaili Alatau region, Karychev said. He also noted that the Horticulture Master Plan of the Agribusiness 2020 Programme provides for a phased increase in orchard areas in Kazakhstan. “The Kazakh government has embarked on the green economy, so the area of organic orchards and the demand for environmentally friendly products will only grow,” he said.

Wild apple forests, cultivated orchards, overlooking Almaty.

From Wild Apples to Sustainable Traditions

“The wild apple forests of Kazakhstan are part of one of the world’s biodiversity hot spots – it is one of the centers of origins of many fruits, and could potentially hold the keys to a sustainable agriculture of the future,” Roland says. But beyond apples, Kazakhstan also has an important agricultural tradition, and one which is beginning to be recognized and supported.

“Kazakh food production has a fascinating and beautiful history, with two interwoven threads of livestock-focused semi-nomadism and advanced mountainside and outwash valley horticulture,” Roland explained. Now is the time to look back to the country’s early food production methods.

The country’s grasslands and forests would be particularly well-suited to organic and biodiverse agriculture, he said. “Modern ‘organic’ agriculture often does not do much more than change the sprays and offer a bit of focus on soil health. If the overall framework is still industrial-scale tillage, then ‘organic’ alone isn’t much of an improvement.” He proposes instead regenerative agriculture, permaculture and carbon farming.

“In the long term,” Roland said, “I believe that truly sustainable economic and ecological growth will come from Kazakhstan focusing on its ancient agricultural history and incredible resources.”

These include biodiverse food forests and vast grasslands, which can produce useful yields with little to no input, Roland said. “Mimicking the natural Kazakh ecosystems could produce a new form of mixed perennial agriculture, with many opportunities for unique value-added products.” Among these products could be fruits like pears, plums, peaches and many more; nuts; a variety of berries; vegetables; herbs; honey and maple syrup; plus some smaller livestock. Most of these, Roland said, have been part of Kazakhstan’s indigenous ecosystem for years.

Our new South field is wrapped around slopes and ridges where plowing nice straight rows can lead to erosion and soil loss in a heavy rain. To solve this problem we used a system called “keyline design” to plot our furrows so each one remains level.

Although our wee little plants are still rather small, visit thisdosage I post this picture to show how this new system is working. The large quantity of rainfall we had Tuesday evening through this morning would normally have caused water to go coursing down the pathways of our raised beds, medicationssee taking some of our precious topsoil with it. As you can see in the pathways shown in the photo, water is held along the entire length of the pathways, meaning it will soak deeply into our soil for future use by the plants, and the nutrients and soil will be retained where they are in the field, rather that racing away into the nearest stream. How exciting when things actually work out like you planned! Thanks again to Ethan Roland at Appleseed Permaculture for helping us lay this out.
-Shane

AppleSeed Permaculture, an ecological design and development firm with a history of innovative projects, has opened a new branch location in New Jersey. Based in the Hudson Valley of New York, the new New Jersey office expands AppleSeed’s regional service area to include NY, NJ, and surrounding states. In business since 2006, AppleSeed has designed over 3000 acres of homes, farms and campuses across six states.

Sean Walsh is heading the New Jersey branch. Sean, a New Jersey native, is a permaculture designer, ecological landscaper, gardener, and teacher based in Monmouth County. He holds a Masters Degree in Sustainable Landscape Planning & Design from The Conway School of Landscape Design.

Permaculture is a design science that weaves together all the elements of sustainability—organic agriculture, renewable energy, green architecture, natural building, biomimicry, ecological engineering, biodynamics, triple-bottom line accounting, and more are combined to provide 100% sustainability anywhere in the world.

According to AppleSeed Permaculture founder, Ethan Roland Soloviev, “We are very excited to open our first branch location. This makes it easy to share our years of experience so that more people can design for 100% sustainability. I want every community in New Jersey to have access to delicious organic food, pure clean water, and renewable energy – straight from their own back yards!”

AppleSeed Permaculture offers services including sustainable master planning, ecological farm-design, and site pre-purchase assessment consulting. AppleSeed also offers turn-key installation of beautiful, organic, edible landscapes. AppleSeed works across scales from residential to broad-acre for private, institutional, and community clients. Contact AppleSeed Permaculture for cutting-edge sustainability vision and practice with professional service.

This is a guest post from the Rockland Farm Alliance. AppleSeed Permaculture consulted with their community farm earlier this year to implement a keyline layout for their organic vegetable production CSA.

You may have seen the fence go up around our new south field this winter, more about either on Facebook or in person. And you may have seen the lush cover crops of oats, approved field peas, rye and hairy vetch growing that we planted last fall to improve the soil for this year’s crops. Wednesday of last week was another exciting day for us at Cropsey Community Farm. Ethan Roland, of Appleseed Permaculture, came down to help us lay out our beds using the principles of Keyline Design. It was truly great to work with Ethan, an expert permaculture designer, teacher, and researcher based in the Hudson River Valley.

Ethan Roland of Appleseed Permacuture works with farmer Jose Romero-Bosch.

Jose, Ryan and I witnessed more erosion than we were comfortable with on the north field last year. Our fragile, sandy soil would wash down the pathways between our raised beds during heavy rains, taking nutrients along, and leaving the crops growing near the ridge in the middle of the field to struggle along with less food, humus, and topsoil. We’re not talking landslides here, but over time, this is one of the same processes that is leaving much of the incredibly fertile Midwest of our country with less than four thin inches of dying, drought-vulnerable dirt. Virgin prairie soils that settlers plowed up there were often two feet thick of dark earthen gold.

Maybe that comparison is a little severe, but we were not comfortable with what we saw, and were determined to set up our beds to minimize erosion. After trying to figure out how best to do this on our own, we finally decided to call someone with experience.

When Ethan showed up, I grabbed a bucket of landscaping flags and his clipboard, and he shouldered his tripod and laser level. The wind was whipping as we trudged up to the field and set up the laser level. We commenced straight away with marking contours in a few spots. Ethan quickly trained Jose and I to use the laser level ourselves, and with his keen eye for the land and experience we laid out the longest contour on the field, as well as a few that crossed the steepest, most erosion-susceptible spots on our hilly south field by lunchtime.

After lunch we went inside and mapped out the contours on paper. Ethan saw four distinct sections to the field. There are two little “bowls,” a ridge, and a corner where the land drops away again in the northwest corner of the field. In each of these sections, we chose a particular contour line, from among the ones we had staked out that morning, to base our plowing and beds off of. Here is a very abridged version of using Keyline Design to lay out a field like ours: you choose a basic contour in a given area so that when you plow or form your beds parallel to that contour, and they inevitable become slightly off contour due to the radius of the curve becoming greater or narrower, the water’s charge down the hill is stopped and directed ever so gently away from valleys and out towards ridges. The idea is that erosion is nearly stopped, water is dispersed more evenly through the field, and substantially more water soaks into the land than before.

This should result in healthier soil, and healthier, tastier crops. I think it will be really beautiful to behold. Though it will make some elements of our job more complex, such as planning where to put each crop since all of the rows will be different lengths, to us this choice was absolutely necessary. So thank you, Ethan for guiding us in this process. We are excited to see our the new field blossoms this year. Keep an eye out for us in the fields. If the ground dries up we’ll be out there real soon.

Permaculture design – landscapes developed to be useful, to sustain both the gardener and the land – may be a fringe movement, but it is the fastest-growing segment in the plant industry, according to Dale Hendricks, founder of North Creek Nurseries in Pennsylvania.

He compared the status of permaculture today to an eccentric-seeming gardening push in the 1980s that touted the cultivation of more native plants. At the time, many gardeners summed up that movement as the ideas of “a few crazies,” Hendricks recalled in a February lecture in Boston for New England Grows. “But now that fringe group has become almost mainstream.”

Similarly, “Permaculture…may be on the fringe now, but it is coming into its own.”

In Maine, the permaculture boom is already here.

The Resilience Hub, a nonprofit group in Portland promoting permaculture design, has 1,700 members, holds 50 to 60 events a year and helps people translate the principles of permaculture design to their homes, said Lisa Fernandes, the director who helped found the group in 2005. For one annual event, the “permablitz,” Hub members and others spend a day transforming someone’s property into a permaculture site.

Fernandes defined permaculture as “a design method based on ecological patterns. It is something you use rather than something you do.”

Ethan C. Roland of AppleSeed Permaculture in Stone Ridge, N.Y., who also lectured at New England Grows, defined it a little differently. “Permaculture design mimics the diversity, stability and permanence of natural systems,” he said.

What do these definitions mean in practise?

Permaculture, which is a contraction for “permanent agriculture,” attempts to minimize the outside elements brought onto a property, such as energy, water and raw materials from distant places. It also works to minimize the waste that leaves the property. It encompasses composting, rooftop solar panels, rainwater collection and vegetable gardens. A favorite vegetable garden mix among permaculture practioners is the so-called “three sisters,” the combination of crops that native tribes taught the Pilgrims to plant – corn, pole beans, and squash. The plants work together, and they make efficient use of space; the beans climb the corn, and the squash keeps the weeds down and the roots cool. These three happen to be native plants, but users of permaculture are more interested in how useful plants are than where they come from. They will grow native fruits, such as blueberries, elderberries and the paw paw tree, and non-natives, such Chinese chestnuts, which are resistant to chestnut blight; apple and peach trees, which have been grown in America for generations but are not native, and the Siberian pea shrub, which produces in a small space and improves the soil. Animals have a role to play in permaculture, too. Chickens, for example, provide eggs (and perhaps meat) for eating, as well as manure to fertilize the soil. They eat ticks that can spread disease and help mix up ingredients in the compost pile.

“When you walk into a well-designed permaculture garden, all the elements clearly work together,” ” Fernandes said. “There is biological diversity and a really heavy yield, whether that yield is food, flowers or herbs. There is a palpably different level of energy.”

Roland believes the Earth is sick, with climate change causing ever more storms, and many species going extinct or disappearing from their traditional ranges.

“Sustainable is not enough,” he said. “We have to go beyond sustaining to increasing the health of ecological systems. We need to heal the damage that has been done.”

You can start on that important work yourself by employing the practices of permaculture at your home. And you could well be part of the next big trend.

To schedule a consultation with AppleSeed Permaculture and get started, contact us now.